Monday, March 9, 2015

Review: Invaded by Melissa Landers

The romantic sequel to Alienated
takes long-distance relationships to a new level as Cara and Aelyx long for
each other from opposite ends of the universe...until a threat to both their
worlds reunites them.

Cara always knew life on planet
L’eihr would be an adjustment. With Aelyx, her L’eihr boyfriend, back on Earth,
working to mend the broken alliance between their two planets, Cara is left to
fend for herself at a new school, surrounded by hostile alien clones. Even the
weird dorm pet hates her.

Things look up when Cara is
appointed as human representative to a panel preparing for a human colony on
L’eihr. A society melding their two cultures is a place where Cara and Aelyx
could one day make a life together. But with L’eihr leaders balking at granting
even the most basic freedoms, Cara begins to wonder if she could ever be happy
on this planet, even with Aelyx by her side.

Meanwhile, on Earth, Aelyx, finds
himself thrown into a full-scale PR campaign to improve human-L’eihr relations.
Humans don’t know that their very survival depends on this alliance: only
Aelyx’s people have the technology to fix the deadly contamination in the
global water supply that human governments are hiding. Yet despite their upper
hand, the leaders of his world suddenly seem desperate to get humans on their
side, and hardly bat an eye at extremists’ multiple attempts on Aelyx’s life.

The Way clearly needs humans’
help . . . but with what? And what will they ask for in return?

My Review

I’m 99.9% sure aliens are the new vampires. And I’m totally
more than just okay with that. (I never really liked vampires anyway.)

So Aelyx and Cara are back and trying to fix all of the
craziness that happened in the first book. And I gotta say, I wasn’t as thrilled
as I was when I read the first book, but I still enjoyed it. I honestly don’t
know what happened to me. I was so pumped to read this book, but when I finally
had the chance, I wasn’t feeling it. I have some theories that I’ll mix into my
actual review, simply so this post isn’t just about me boohoo-ing and
woe-is-me-ing.

The book starts off pretty close to where Alienated left off, and that’s probably
my first issue with it. I didn’t really like the ending of Alienated. It seemed really rushed and I think it took away from
the awesome plotline of the story. This just transferred to Invaded. I felt like the entire book was
going by really fast, despite there not being a lot actually happening in the
book. Weird, right?

Also, because the book picks up right where the first one
left off, Aelyx and Cara are not even together about ¾ of the story. The romance
was the most important aspect of Alienated,
and I think it got lost somewhere in all of the world-building for L’eihr. Speaking of world-building, there
was a very weird ritual scene featuring Cara and a bunch of aliens on the
planet that just made me feel uncomfortable. I understand its purpose, but I
when I was reading, I didn’t really think this ritual was something Cara would
have participated in. I actually felt this a lot while reading. I guess it was
because Cara is so similar to myself—nerdy, comfortable at home instead of with
friends, easily embarrassed, etc., (minus the whole alien boyfriend bit)—and I
couldn’t see myself making a lot of the decisions she did. Especially the one
she made at the end. That decision just came about waaaaaay too easily for her.
Maybe there should have just been more pages featuring her thinking over this
dilemma, instead of just having her change her mind so suddenly.

Okay, since I’ve shared/ranted about all of my issues, now
it’s time to get into what I did like. The world-building was pretty awesome. I
didn’t think I would enjoy reading about such a bland alien planet, but Landers
made it work. Cara’s voice allowed the descriptions of the boring planet of L’eihr to come across as a funny joke.
Without this, I probably would have had to have set the book down, because, I
have to be honest, I would NEVER choose to live on L’eihr, even if I had a hot alien boy to keep me company. It’s just
too blugh, bland, and washed-out.

I also really enjoyed the side characters in the story. Cara’s
connection with her brother was touching and sweet and it totally made me want
to ask my parents why my older sister couldn’t have been born a boy. And I
thoroughly expected to hate Syrine after what she did in Alienated, but surprisingly, I liked her character arc. Then there’s
David. Oh, David. And that’s all I’m going to say about him.

All in all, Invaded was
a good sequel; it was just too fast-paced with too little Aelyx and Cara
together to make me love it as much as I loved Alienated. I really hope this series gets a third book. I think it
needs it after having such a quick ending.

*Note: I purchased
a copy of this book. This in no way altered my opinion/review.

1 comment:

we have lot of variations in the methods of the reading the shells but usually the shells are thrown to ask the gods the answer to a specific question following prayers or blessings of the shells.see more,